What does Food Mean to Cubans?
By: Jack Laub
Cuban laborers in a cigar factory (Havana).
Why did I write about Cuba as pertaining to any other country that was available for the picking? The answer simply appeared to me, I say. It seemed a place of pivotal importance. My mother, having been there, had to fly to Canada in 1998 in order to enter the country. Having gone with a group of school teachers, and returning with beautiful pictures of a place stuck in antiquity, I was mesmerized. How had this nation, so cut off from the world’s largest industrial devolved nation, its neighbor of less than 90 miles, become a place where organic farming has excelled? I found it just as surprising when in my research I found that since the collapse of the socialist trading network, Cuba has struggled socially, economically, and agriculturally. Reliance upon daily food rations, “goverened by the libretta, a booklet that rations monthly allowances of staples such as rice, oil, sugar, beans, and soap,” (http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Cuba.html) has left many farmers reliant upon their own innovation to attain substance. Luckily, thanks to urban farms, like I described in my first post, have promoted the re-opening of “the free farmer’s markets (MLCs), [which] closed in 1986 because they had enabled some Cubans to become wealthy at the expense of others,” violating mores of a communist government (http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Cuba.html). Although fresh veggies are readily available for the lower castes living in urban areas to purchase at bodegas, beef has become a commodity. Most Cubans in fact get their protein from the cheaper jamon vikin (low-quality pork), and chicken which is approx.. $2 (US dollar) per pound in the capital (http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Cuba.html).
What does this mean for the future of Cuban food?
Celebrations like Carnival and the rite of passage quincanera of the 16th birthday, have always had Cubans fond of sweets, special cakes, and pastries. They often eat ice cream salads, which is what it sounds like, which costs about 5 pesos (Cuban) or twenty three cents (US) (http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Cuba.html).
Entry way into Havana’s largest ice cream dispensary.
“Copelia” is the island nation’s biggest ice cream dispensary. Located in the nation’s capital it represents the best Ice cream, although it may not be fresh or organic, to a typical Cuban. In my opinion, this love of ice cream and greasy foods shows a type of cultural mixing of the antiquated Cuban lifestyle, preserved since the late 1950’s, with western culture. Although Cuba has held onto its traditional dishes, inspired by a hundred years of cultural mixing between Africans, Spanish and the Taino ancestors, the country itself is in need of more trading partners to supply its some 12 million or more citizens with an amount of food unavailable for them at home. Pressured by the global market, and the United nations, the United States has been pressed to lift the embargo in order to begin the devolpment of the communist island, which has been labeled as an underdevolped nation. Depressing as it may seem, Cuba will change in the next decade; socially, gastronomically, and economically.
Jack Laub
Sources: cited within (( brackets )).
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